Spilled Milk

June 16, 2008 at 10:02 pm (Uncategorized)

So last night I’m doing the last of packing for my trip. I get a phone call and absent-mindedly throw my phone on the bed. Ten minutes later I hear a crack and look down and oh-my-goodness I just stepped on my iPhone!
Now, if it were just any phone I could pop out the sim card and use one of my old phones but Nooooo I have to buy a whole new phone. The verdict is that I’m going to wait until the new iPhone comes out in a few weeks because it will cost me the same price as a refurbished iPhone from Apple, minus shipping.

So you’re packing to get ready for a wonderful vacation and something like that happens to you. What do you do? How do you react? Are you so attached to your belongings that it wrecks your night? or the next day? or the whole trip?
I was pretty irked (okay maybe even pissed off) at first but then I started looking at it in a spiritual way: Maybe I just need a technological vacation. At least I didn’t cut my foot on the glass. At least it wasn’t my camera! Thank God I can afford to buy a new one, I sure am lucky.

In one small negative incident that cannot be undone there are a long list of positives that can be found. I didn’t want people calling me the whole time I was gone anyway! So that’s that. It’s broken and I now am temporarily without cell phone. And I’m okay with that.
Love and blessings,
Katie

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Life is Beautiful

June 10, 2008 at 11:47 am (Children, Joy, Yoga)

A couple of weeks ago, my favorite yoga teacher (Laurie Gallagher) from Be Well opened a new studio in Livermore called Cosmic Dog Yoga. I was lucky enough to become part of the Karma Club. Yogis like me with a tight budget can exchange one shift a week in either childcare, front desk, or clean up crew for unlimited free yoga classes. And boy have I been getting my time’s worth!!

Tonight I did my first class where I really felt like my body is starting to get back in shape. I felt magnificent afterwards. The re-addition of yoga into my life has already opened so many doors inside of me!

I’ve been thinking a lot about awareness, and presence of late, trying to take notice of my thoughts, and how silly they can be at times. The resultant presence of mind really does ground you into the here and now.

Today I experienced a very powerful little moment with Torin, a one and half year old with Downs Syndrome who I was looking after. His mom had left with his three siblings to go to their swim practices while I stayed home with Torin

during his nap time. I have a few hours to myself until he wakes up. Today, I heard him stirring and I went into his room. He always cries when he wakes up and it occurred to me today what a difficult spot his little soul is in right now. He has three loud siblings, an understandably busy mother, and on top of that he is having difficulty getting his body and mind to do what he wants them too. His soul is beginning to sense that he is different from the others who surround him. In short, this little guy has a lot to be frustrated about. So I talked very gently to him and asked him if he wanted to get up. Instead of picking him right up like I normally would I gave him a moment. I asked him if he needed to stretch and at his crib-side stretched my arms over head and showed him what I meant. He did a little stretch of his own and then I picked him up and set him down on his changing table. I put a lot of energy into making eye contact with him and letting him know that I could tell he was upset and that it’s okay to cry. After I changed him I picked him up and he was still crying. I began to hum a little made up tune and rub his back and I could feel his little body relax against mine.

It’s soul-to-soul moments like that that make everyday an adventure. You never know who you’ll meet, who’ll you’ll connect with, or what you might encounter. To be aware and in awe of such moments is what makes life feel like an adventure.

My boyfriend has often pointed out to me that if I worked more hours and saved more money that I could definitely save up enough to travel. But when I think of what it would do to the quality of my everyday life, it just isn’t a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I would rather savor every day than live for sometime next year. To me my healthy (and often pricey) food and the freedom to buy little gifts for people and for myself is worth way more than a vacation.

But on that note, one week from today I’ll be on a cruise ship on my way up to Alaska. Land of Wolves, Polar Bears, and the Aurora Borealis. And thanks to a very dear friend in my life who felt I deserved to experience Alaska fully I now get to take a helicopter ride to Mendenhall Glacier and go hiking there for three hours! Yeeee-haaaa!

Love and Blessings,

Katie

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Wanderlust

June 10, 2008 at 11:24 am (Uncategorized)

All my life I have struggled to contain my bitterness at the fact that my family could not afford to travel abroad. Instead, when I was six we had bought a cabin in the woods at Bear River Reservoir. Cabins are an ongoing financial responsibility. Like any house, you have to pay electric, water, and phone bills. The trips to and from the cabin add up, not to mention the accompanying “toys:” quads, motorcycles, and snowmobiles. I’ve had my share of fun vacations. They just didn’t provide me with sophisticated memories to allude to such as, “Oh the sea food of the French Riviera is unmatched anywhere else in the world.”

So, ever since I was about 11 any time someone I knew talked about an exciting, out-of-country vacation jealousy boiled up in my breast, and though I tried to hide it I’m sure it was easy for others to perceive.

The issue resurfaced recently when a friend of mine was talking about her application to NYU. I have always said I wanted to go to a school close to home because I am so close to my family. She said, “that’s one thing I can’t understand about you. How you can want to just stay in one place.”

I can’t remember what response I managed to get out but inside, I was irate. How could she think I don’t want to travel? There are many reasons I don’t want to go to school out of state, or even as far away as southern California. I don’t want to be far away if something should happen to a loved one. I can’t afford out-of-state tuition. And my parents don’t up and pay for me to go to Argentina like hers did. But why would that make her think I’m not interested in travel?

I realized that my intense feelings on the subject are way out of balance. There are thousands, maybe millions, of people on this planet who have lived out their entire lives in a desert. I am blessed to have been born in a state with beautiful forests, beautiful oceans, beautiful deserts, and beautiful mountains. In fact, Pulitzer Prize-Winner author and world traveller Eugene O’Neill decided to build his “final home and harbour” in the Las Trampas Wilderness that overlooks Danville. To him, it was the most beautiful place in the world.

Reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth is helping me see this issue in a different light. In the beginning of the book he talks about identity. I realized that part of the reason I was so damned angry I hadn’t traveled wasn’t simply because I wanted to go to France, or I wanted to go to Africa. My anger was tied up in my identity and the fact that I want to be the kind of person who has been to those places. I want memories in foreign countries to casually reference so that others will think I am cultured. Realizing this took a lot of the hot air out of my angry balloon. How silly it seems when you see it for what it is. My anger at others experiences was rooted in my insecurity that I didn’t have any such stories of my own to tell. But, I have lots of memories as a child getting to play in a forest that I knew like the back of my hand and how many people can say that? So we’re all different. Our paths are different. Our experiences are different.

You can travel the world hoping that doing so will make you happy. But to stick to your roots, to make peace with and bring joy to your family, to love the town you grew up in, and most of all to accept your own personal path is to move toward happiness. I’m trying to accept that up until this point in my life, I haven’t gotten to do much traveling. I want to enjoy right now, not scrimp and save years for a one month vacation. I want to honor and appreciate the experiences that others in my life have had around the world instead of envy them to the point that I can’t even listen.

In a few weeks I’m going on a cruise to Alaska with my Grandpa. I have always wanted to go to Alaska because wolves have always been my favorite animal. Though I know my chances of seeing a wolf on this cruise (that is not a piece of taxonomy) is about .00000001% I am still thrilled to be going. Working through this has helped me come to that place because before I was thinking, “Why couldn’t it be a cruise to ______?” Why just Alaska? I let my ego’s whiny frame of mind get in the way of the excitement that I GET TO GO TO ALASKA!

Love, peace, and blessings,
Katie

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